Early this year, as a crisis unfolded in the chambers of power in Chongqing, three men flew into this fog-wreathed riverside metropolis within a day or two of one another. They were members of the inner court of Bo Xilai (薄?來), the Chinese Communist Party aristocrat who ran the city, and they had come to repair a rupture between the strong-willed Bo and his equally driven police chief.
Just days earlier, on Jan. 28, the police chief, Wang Lijun (王立軍), had pressed Bo over evidence tying Bo’s wife to the death last fall of a British businessman, prompting Bo to punch Wang in the face, Wang later recounted to others. The three men — two of them powerful businessmen and the other a former intelligence agent — had befriended Bo and Wang years ago. They knew both to be controlling and impulsive, and their goal was to broker a peace.
The most famous of the three, Xu Ming (徐明), 41, listed by Forbes as China’s eighth-richest person in 2005, had flown in on his private jet. He and the others held separate meetings with Bo and Wang. The damage was irreparable. The former intelligence agent, Yu Junshi (于俊世), rushed home and stuffed a bag with 1.2 million yuan, or nearly US$200,000, to take to a bank with Ma Biao (馬標), the other businessman, known for his girth. Then all three fled to Australia within days on Xu’s jet, fearful of the fallout from a possible investigation of Bo.
Those figures are now being detained as central suspects or witnesses in the Chinese government’s broad investigation into Bo’s use of power. His fall from the party’s top echelons has opened a window on how some of his closest allies from his years as a rising official in northeast China became entwined in the social and economic fabric of Chongqing, a fast-growing western municipality of 31 million that Bo governed for four years.
The accounts about those allies, which raise questions about Bo’s relations with tycoons, are based primarily on interviews with six people associated with the circle, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of facing official scrutiny, and a review of financial documents and company Web sites. Together, they reveal the workings of the shadowy court of one of China’s leaders and of the panic that set in when these ambitious figures realized their world was about to collapse.
“These are powerful men with their own style,” one person who has met Yu said. “It was all very strange, very abnormal, the way they acted at that time.”
On Feb. 6, Wang drove to the US consulate in Chengdu and told diplomats about what he said was the murder of the Briton, Neil Heywood, which set in motion one of China’s biggest political scandals in decades: Bo has been removed from his posts, his allies are under scrutiny and his wife is a suspect in the killing.
The three men who fled to Australia have been held for two months. They left after Wang’s consulate visit, but returned to China in about 10 days, thinking that Bo had avoided serious trouble. They were picked up by the police around the time that Bo was removed as party chief of Chongqing on March 15, according to several people who knew the men or their friends and families. One with security contacts said almost 60 people had been detained.
All three had much to lose. Xu and Ma in particular had become involved in land deals in Chongqing, and feared being brought down if Bo was investigated for corruption, their associates said.
The men could not be reached for comment, and employees at companies where they serve as executives declined to answer questions.
The first to appear on the scene in Chongqing was Yu, a fixer for the Bo family. He moved to Chongqing before Bo arrived in December 2007 for his posting as party chief. Bo had sent him to gather information and build relations, according to people who have met Yu, a former intelligence officer for the People’s Liberation Army.
Yu had been posted to Bangkok in the 1990s, but an agent in his network defected and the members of his group were recalled and punished.
After Yu left the intelligence service, he returned to his hometown, Dalian, where Bo was mayor and Xu was building up his companies. Yu was investigated by the police over his business activities, and he enlisted the help of Gu Kailai (谷開來), a lawyer married to Bo. He soon became friends with Bo, Xu, Ma and Wang, who was a police officer in the surrounding province of Liaoning, people familiar with this history said.
“Bo Xilai is fascinated by spies, so he likes to make friends with intelligence agents,” said Yang Haipeng (楊海鵬), an investigative journalist in Shanghai.
Yu, well read and well mannered, moved in rarefied circles in Chongqing and kept a low profile. Business executives seeking to curry favor with Bo and Wang sometimes approached Yu.
In 2009, Bo and Wang started a crackdown on criminal gangs that was also an offensive against private entrepreneurs and Bo’s enemies. Fearful of being unfairly ensnared in the crackdown, Yin Mingshan (尹明善), the founder of Lifan Group, a motorcycle company, arranged a banquet with Yu, said two friends of the banquet’s organizer.
“All the bosses needed protection,” one of them said.
Spokespeople at the company did not answer calls seeking comment.
Right after the campaign began, Xu and Ma started real-estate projects in Chongqing through a complex web of companies.
“Bo Xilai would always give Xu Ming advantages in doing business,” one person said.
In the 1990s, Xu built up his main conglomerate, Dalian Shide, whose holdings range from home appliances to finance to building materials, by winning contracts from local officials, including a lucrative deal to provide window frames while Bo was mayor of Dalian. Xu also received generous loans from state banks, including from China Guangfa Bank, where Ma was a branch chief.
Ma left the bank years ago and started an insurance company. After Bo arrived in Chongqing, Ma and Xu set up several companies to develop Chongqing real estate, according to financial records and information from government and company Web sites. Xu and Ma have roles in at least three companies founded in 2009: Chongqing Heshengyu Real Estate Development, Chongqing Shenghe Construction and Guanghua Huihuang.
Xu found ways to keep himself veiled. He sometimes used a Hong Kong company, Golden International Investment, to invest in local companies. Records in Hong Kong list Xu and three other Dalian Shide executives as the directors of Golden in 2003.
The companies bought at least a half-million square meters of land in Chongqing, according to Chinese news media reports. Xu and Ma often met their allies discreetly in hotels.
One sweltering night last summer, Ma walked with Yu into the lobby of the Nanshan Lijing Resort, set in misty hills on the city’s outskirts. Wang greeted them there in a respectful manner, and they dined with Xu, one witness said. The resort was known as a rendezvous point for people close to Bo, and Heywood’s body was found in a villa there on Nov. 15. Police investigators determined that Heywood had been poisoned and suspected Bo’s wife was involved.
Tensions built between Bo and Wang and things fell apart after they had their explosive meeting on Jan. 28. Xu beseeched Yu to fly to Chongqing from Beijing. On Jan. 31, Yu met with Wang for an entire night in Wang’s suite at police headquarters. The next day, his driver switched cars, picked up Ma at the airport and drove him and Yu to the Foggy City Hotel, where Bo sometimes dined and held meetings. Ma met with Bo while Yu waited in the lobby.
“When Ma Biao came out, his face looked ashen,” a friend of Yu’s said.
On Feb. 2, the two made their run to the bank. Yu told Ma to take the bag of cash inside by himself so the two would avoid being recorded together on security cameras. Then they flew out of Chongqing. That day, the local government announced that Wang had been removed from his police chief job.
Xu flew in on Feb. 3 and met with Bo. Within a week, he and the other two left for Hong Kong from northern China and proceeded to Australia.
“We thought they weren’t coming back,” one person familiar with them said.
However, they returned. Then, on March 14, as word quietly spread of Bo’s purge, Yu realized that he and his cohorts would be detained. He told his wife and son to go for a stroll that evening outside their Beijing home, so they would not witness the arrival of the police, his wife told a friend.
However, the police did not arrive until later that night, and the family watched as Yu was led away.
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